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In the effort to fight local air pollution, policy-makers have set
their sights on industry and vehicles. But there’s another sinister
source of air pollution that no city or country can control by itself,
and Ken Wilkening knows all about it.
Dr. Wilkening has played a leading role in defining and conceptualizing
the intercontinental transport of air pollution (ICT), also referred to
as hemispheric transport of air pollution, or simply, global air
pollution. His interest in the topic started in the late 1990s, when he
worked for a small environmental organization in San Francisco. Fresh
from researching regional-scale air pollution in Asia, he spotted
growing scientific evidence that air pollutants originating in Asia
were traveling across the Pacific Ocean and being detected in North
America. In 1997, monitoring equipment in Washington State picked up
Asian air pollution for the first time. A year later, satellites
tracked a huge dust cloud that originated in western China . Within
only seven days, the dust reached North America’s Pacific coast. And
there was other evidence.
So in 2000, Dr. Wilkening organized a conference on trans-Pacific air
pollution in Seattle. It brought together more than 100 scientists and
government officials from around the Pacific Rim, including Canada,
China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.
Because it was the first such conference, it caught the eye of high
level policy-makers and the larger scientific community. Dr. Wilkening
was lead author of an article in Science magazine, the world’s most
prestigious scientific journal, that summarized the findings of the
conference.
Trans-Pacific air pollution, however, proved to be only the tip of an
air pollution iceberg. Six years later, Dr. Wilkening now knows that
very long range transport of air pollutants isn’t limited to the
Pacific Rim. “To put it simply, we have very long range transport of
air pollution pretty much everywhere in the world,” he notes.
Pollutants of concern include dust, heavy metals such as mercury,
substances that lead to acid rain, and persistent organic pollutants
that include pesticides such as DDT, industrial chemicals such as PCBs,
and combustion byproducts such as dioxins.
Dr. Wilkening and others are beginning to recognize that ICT is a
bridge between regional-scale transboundary air pollution and truly
global atmospheric problems such as climate change and ozone depletion.
The implications are profound. This means that human civilization is
now being challenged by air quality problems on all scales—from local
to national to regional to intercontinental to global.
How should we tackle ICT? Through his research, Dr. Wilkening will be
advocating a fresh look at the merits of a “Law of the Atmosphere.”
Canada was an early leader in floating such an idea (in 1988), but
since then, Canada and the rest of the world have shown little interest
in it. Though the Law of the Atmosphere idea is currently dormant, ICT
may be the vehicle for bringing it out of hibernation. Dr. Wilkening
received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, which is allowing him to study both the science and
the politics of ICT. The research will include an assessment of the
state of ICT science, an investigation of how the science is
influencing policy, and an exploration of innovative policy ideas for
addressing ICT.
“ICT is, except in rare instances, a low-level, long-term, widespread
and subtle problem, and that’s the real challenge,” says Dr. Wilkening.
“It’s not a ‘hit you between the eyes’ kind of phenomenon. It’s like
global warming that way, and it has taken decades for the public and
policy-makers to catch up to the scientists who first began calling
attention to the climate change issue. The rapid industrialization of
China and India will continue to make ICT a hot topic. Right now, the
global environment isn’t on the verge of collapse due to ICT, but it’s
one small, added strain to our social and ecological systems that could
lead to a global environmental tipping point.”
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Dr. Wilkening's Bio
Ken Wilkening is an assistant professor in the International Studies
Program at UNBC where he studies the science-policy interface of
international environmental problems. He has an undergraduate degree in
physics, a Master’s in engineering, and received an interdisciplinary
Ph.D. in Earth System Science and international environmental policy
from the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. Recent publications include “Trans-Pacific Air
Pollution” (Science, 6 Oct 2000), Acid Rain Science and Politics in Japan (2004, MIT Press), “Localizing Universal Science: Acid Rain Science and Politics in Europe, North America, and East Asia” in Science and Politics in the International Environment
(2004, Rowman & Littlefield), and “Dragon Dust: Atmospheric Science
and Cooperation on Desertification in the Asia and Pacific Region” (Journal of East Asia Studies, forthcoming). |
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